When you go by the name "Hitachi Data Systems", and you have a conversation with ITP.net, you might be expected to talk about, say, data. And probably touch upon systems a little. Indeed, when Bob Plumridge, chief technology officer, Europe, the Middle East and Africa, HDS, sat down with me this week, he did cover those areas, but spent much of his time talking about the massive potential for cost-cutting within ICT infrastructures. And before we lose all but the most strait-laced accountants to YouTube footage of the Oscars, let it be known that Plumridge claims HDS has been able to help its EMEA customers save as much as 60% on their total cost of ownership (TCO) of systems.

Plumridge was in town for IDC's CIO Summit, where he took part in a panel discussion. When he meets with me, of course he talks about systems: "Hardware is an important part of our business, but we also do a lot of software around management for infrastructures, including cloud and data analytics, and also all the services that go along with those types of infrastructure."

It is in that management that HDS' TCO claims are put to the test, but first, I want to know about mobile data.

When Plumridge talks about mobile data, I think I know what he means, but it turns out he is not talking about data on mobiles, but data that is mobile.

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"When we use our credit cards, when we draw money from an ATM, when we buy something one day [in Dubai] and then tomorrow in London and then the following week in New York, [the bank] is looking at your pattern of spend," he explains. "What sort of person are you? What sort of services could they sell to you? Whether that is international travel insurance or flexibility in currency exchange, because your mode of operation suggests you are in lots of different countries on a regular basis."

HDS has also worked with telecoms carriers to tweak the performance of their networks.

"We can take data from a radio mast and look at the drop rate; is there a problem with the mast? [Is the carrier] constantly getting call drops on this mast? Is it overloaded? Do they need to put another mast in the area in order to be able to split the cell workloads? So we can do analytics on pretty much any data we're holding for our customers."